Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sharply criticized President Donald Trump over reports that an alleged Chinese spy cultivated an intimate relationship with a top technology executive who maintains close ties to the president.

Trump, who has frequently emphasized the importance of the United States standing up to China, has denied any knowledge of being compromised by an alleged Chinese plant positioned within his inner circle. Recent reporting described a close relationship between the president and a high-ranking AI executive alleged to be connected to a Chinese spy.

Nvidia, the company the executive leads, produces the advanced chips that Washington has restricted from sale to China on national-security grounds — restrictions that have placed the company at the center of US-China technology competition. Asked whether Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was linked to a Chinese spy, as indicated by the reports, Trump said he had no awareness of the matter at the time.

"I didn't hear about it then," Trump said. "But a lot of people have heard about it. And Jensen totally denies that. I spoke to him today, just to see if he's feeling all right, how you doing. And I asked him about that. I asked him, 'Did you have any idea that she was a spy?' He said, 'I had no idea that she was a spy.' And I really believe him."

McCabe, a career FBI official who served as deputy director until his dismissal in 2018, did not hide his frustration with the president's handling of the matter, speaking with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night.

"It is inconceivable to me that the president of the United States was briefed on this matter. Not one once, but twice, and took no action," McCabe said. "I mean, I cannot even — there are no words to describe how big a coup this is for the Chinese government to have an asset, a developed, recruited asset, to fall into an intimate relationship with the most significant tech leader in the world, the CEO of the company that produces the chips that are forbidden fruit to the government of China and Chinese technology industries. And then to have that person, that CEO, have a persistent, direct relationship with the president of the United States, during which time we know that he advocated strenuously for the reduction or removal of trade restrictions between the United States and China over Nvidia chips."

"I mean, this is a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth," McCabe added. "This is unbelievable. Huang has been pushing for easing restrictions by the Trump administration on Nvidia selling chips to China. And he got them. He got them in return for the ability to sell Nvidia chips to China in return for giving the United States government 25 percent of that sale. That alone is off the charts."

McCabe said that across his entire career he had never witnessed the United States government profiting from the sale of a formerly restricted item to what he described as an existential adversary. Export controls on leading-edge semiconductors have been a central instrument of US policy toward China, aimed at restricting Beijing's access to the computing power behind advanced artificial intelligence.

CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller was equally struck by Trump's indifference, describing the arrangement as "an incredible coup by Chinese intelligence" — an effort to create an access agent, either by building a structure around the individual or by recruiting someone on the way up in the tech world who could get next to the president of the United States. In counterintelligence practice, such agents are valued less for documents than for proximity — the ability to reach, and potentially influence, officials at the highest levels of government.

"If this started in 2024 with investigations, we're in 2026. Why wasn't this somehow interrupted along the way?" Miller said. He added that the FBI's counterintelligence program was "badly damaged at the beginning of the Trump administration."

"So many people were pulled out, fired, transferred, and at least two of the assistant directors in charge of the Washington field office were sent packing, fired for investigating people who were close to Donald Trump," Miller said. "The FBI that is operating now is not the FBI I left, and it's not the FBI that Mr. McCabe left."

That unresolved question — how an inquiry said to have begun in 2024 failed to interrupt the alleged relationship — remains unanswered in the public accounts from both the president and his critics.